This course is a great way for a newer diver to quickly gain practical experience in a variety of different types of diving. While an active diver may gain experience just by diving, the advanced course will get them there much quicker, and with a higher degree of insight because of the conveyance of their instructor's real world experience. To accomplish its goal, the course enables students to participate in various underwater tasks that broaden both their awareness of the aquatic realm and their capabilities as divers. The course is designed to be simple and short, and to stress diving participation and skill development, more than theory. It consists of short classroom review sessions and five open-water dives.

The advanced course can be completed locally or while on one of our winter Caribbean dive trips. The instructional fee for the course is $195.00 (if done locally, or $150.00 if done on an MSD trip) and the cost for the required text "PADI Adventures in Diving Manual" is $39.95 - available at MSD. Although the manual contains many different sections pertaining to a multitude of advanced dive options, we choose to do only certain dives based on popularity and suitability for either our local or Caribbean trip environment. Students must read the chapters that correspond to the dives required for either of the two options below, and complete the knowledge reviews for each dive before the start of class. Equipment rental fees are not covered on any MSD continuing education course.

Local - Advanced Course

The course consists of short classroom review sessions and five open-water dives in which students are oriented to the following activities;

The Adventures class is offered on weekends out of our Brainerd facility only (once again because of our use of the Cuyuna Mines). We start on Friday night between 5 and 6 PM (based on available daylight). After a short classroom review session, we will be completing the peak performance buoyancy and night dives. Saturday morning at 9 AM we meet at the shop again where we do some more classroom activities and then we head out to complete the deep, underwater navigation, and search and recovery dives. While we usually complete everything by late Saturday afternoon, it is wise to keep Sunday available is case we run into any issues such as weather, etc. Please check our class schedule page for specific class starting dates.

Course Fee: $195.00 includes PADI's processing fee.

Items for Class: PADI Adventures in Diving manual $39.95 and all equipment including: compass, slate and dive light. For those students who have yet to own their equipment, rental is available.

MSD Trip - Advanced Course

On a Caribbean dive trip many of the dives that we will be doing can easily be counted towards the advanced certification. We are doing the dives anyways, you might as well get credit for them.

Five dives are need for the certification. The one required dive for the advanced certification is the underwater navigation dive. Because of the logistics involved with this dive (we need a flat bottom with no current and limited visibility), we usually have the advanced diver complete this back home in the summer, by joining in with a traditional class for just this dive.

Some of dives that we commonly do on the Caribbean dive trips to satisfy the other four dives would be:

- Boat

- Night

- Deep

and in some cases if the destination allows:

- Drift

- Wreck

Course Fee: $150.00 - this would include four of the above dives, the local navigation dive, and PADI's processing fee.

Items for Class: PADI Adventures in Diving manual $39.95 and all equipment including: compass, slate and dive light. For those students who have yet to own their equipment, rental is available.